"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show." ---Bertrand Russell (1907) Rob Gluck

"I have come to believe, though very reluctantly, that it [mathematics] consists of tautologies. I fear that, to a mind of sufficient intellectual power, the whole of mathematics would appear trivial, as trivial as the statement that a four-legged animal is an animal." ---Bertrand Russell (1957)

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Statistics Is Suddenly Sexy!

As someone who last took a statistics course 35 years ago,
I could never have foreseen the popular rage that statistics and data-crunching would become in
current times (I still recall, and wrote about, my introduction to statistics as a youngster in a museum, though I didn't know it as such back then). And I haven't yet read Nate Silver's huge
bestseller "The Signal and The Noise" -- I assume it is good
and probably has a strong Bayesian tilt. But I love the volume I've just finished reading (which doesn't even mention Bayes): "Naked Statistics"
from Charles Wheelan -- it's likely the best, most palatable introduction
to statistics for layfolks I've ever seen. Not at all overly-technical, in fact
sprinkled with fun and humor, and full of real-world examples (not
abstractions) of statistical thinking in our day-to-day lives.

The
book has a very nice progression of topic areas from means and medians
and 'descriptive statistics,' through probability, correlation, the
central limit theorem, hypothesis-testing, and on to regression analysis, but always with an
emphasis on understanding underlying concepts, not specific empirical
formulas or computation.
The author's focus is constantly on educating the reader as to why a basic understanding of statistics is vital self-defense in today's firehose world of information, journalism, science claims, and headlines.
Clear examples are drawn from health reporting/diagnosis, gambling,
Wall Street and the economic meltdown, polling, sports, business, and other everyday encounters (as well as including a very good chapter on the classic "Monty Hall Problem").
Some reviewers call Wheelan's approach "intuitive," which can be dangerous in so much as applied statistics and definitely probability can actually be very counter-intuitive at times, but again, this book is only dealing in the basics.
The one major drawback of the volume is that, as indicated above, there is no discussion of Bayesian analysis, which is sort of the 'golden boy' of much current statistical talk, that readers will miss out on.

My
favorite chapter may be Chapter 6, describing how a
probabilistic "Value at Risk" financial model from "overconfident math
geeks" nearly brought down "the global financial system," but every single
chapter is simultaneously intelligent and entertaining (...makes me want to read more of Wheelan).

The NY Times has a review from Abigail Zuger who rightly calls the book, "sparkling and intensely readable":

Zuger, an M.D., actually refers to it as, "the most important health book of the year... even though it’s not primarily about health," and then continues,"...his
multiple real world examples illustrating exactly why even the most
reluctant mathophobe is well advised to achieve a personal understanding
of the statistical underpinnings of life, whether that individual is
watching football on the couch, picking a school for the children or
jiggling anxiously in a hospital admitting office."

Wheelan incidentally, wrote a prior bestseller, entitled "Naked Economics," which I suspect is equally good if you care to brush up on that field of study.

As long as we're talking stats, some otherrecent pieces worth mentioning:

Another blogger believes, "All journalists should be required to pass a course in basic statistics before they are let loose on the unsuspecting public" and argues so here:

Meanwhile,
Evelyn Lamb and Hilda Bastian are two bloggers who presented last week at the Science Online Conference in North Carolina (THEpremier annual digital science communication gathering). Theirs was one of the few math sessions, and entitled: "Public Statistics: Blogging With Numbers":

Finally,
statistician William Briggs recently had Twitter attention tossed
his way for an older provocative piece he did called, "Statistics is Not Math" in which he argues that "Statistics is not math; neither is probability... Statistics rightly belongs to epistemology, the philosophy of how we know what we know." (be sure and read the interesting comments as well):

Many people have recently made the case that statistics,
in some form, should be part of the core math curriculum for ALL
secondary students, and be a basic part of math literacy. Read the above
books and links and you'll be on your way to having it covered. In fact, seriously, I think Wheelan's book (or something like it) ought be mandatory reading for all engaged citizenry!

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About Me:

I'm a number-luvin' primate; hope you are too! ..."Shecky Riemann" is the fanciful pseudonym of a former psychology major and lab-tech (clinical genetics), now cheerleading for mathematics! A product of the 60's he remains proud of his first Presidential vote for George McGovern ;-) ...Cats, cockatoos, and shetland sheepdogs revere him.
Li'l more bio here.